The article below was published in the daily newspaper Sud Ouest, France, on November 14, 1979.
|
THE MAJORITY of the passengers of the Caravelle plane which, according to the crew, was pursued, Monday, by unidentified flying objects (U.F.O.) above Valencia, claimed to have seen nothing. They accuse the pilot of having hidden a technical failure that forced him to land behind "fanciful stories".
Fifty-eight of the 109 passengers, German or Austrian, signed a document to this effect and protested to their embassy, ??for what they consider to be a "mockery" on the part of the company owning the aircraft, "Trabajos Aereos y Enlaces" (TAE).
According to the version of the pilot and copllot, confirmed yesterday at A.F.P., by the deputy director of T.A.E., the aircraft had been followed by U.F.O.s, while flying from Palma de Mallorca to Tenerife.
The U.F.Os. spread a bright light, which "filled the cockpit with a strange reddish glow". According to this version, the strange machines went up and down, and the pilot made the decision to change course to avoid the collision.
According to the same sources, the U.F.O. would have been detected by the radar of the Valencia airport and a military radar. A fighter plane allegedly took off from the Los Llanos military base in the province of Albacete, and the U.F.O. would then have disappeared.
The Deputy Director of the T.A.E. stated that the Valencia airport authorities had not detected any technical malfunctions after an inspection of the Caravelle, and that the pilot had made the "very good decision" to land only to preserve the safety of the passengers.
The Spanish Government's Undersecretariat for Civil Aviation declined to comment, while the Ministry of Defense said it was a "reserved" matter.
Some civilian aviation circles have indicated, however, that the mysterious U.F.O. could be aircraft of the 6th American fleet.
